To A Poet The Mere Making Of

We Shall Know That We Have Begun To Speak True By An Increased Hunger For True-speaking; We Shall Have The Whole Hunger Only After We Have Given Ourselves The First Taste Of It.

When Modernist Poetry, Or What Not So Long Ago Passed For Modernist Poetry, Can Reach The Stage Where The Following Piece By Mr. Ezra Pound Is Seriously Offered As A Poem, There Is Some Justification For The Plain Reader And Orthodox Critic Who Shrinks From Anything That May Be Labelled 'modernist' Either In Terms Of Condemnation Or Approbation. Better He Thinks, That Ten Authentic Poets Should Be Left For Posterity To Discover Than One Charlatan Should Be Allowed To Steal Into The Temple Of Fame.

The Anthology Meets With Two Different Kinds Of Reactions In Living Poets. They Will Either Write Toward The Anthology Or Away From It. Anti-anthology Poets Often Overreach Themselves, Inflicting Protective Distortions On Their Work - As Parents In Old Central Europe Often Deliberately Maimed Their Sons To Save Them From Compulsory Military Service.

I Would Then Say That There Are Two Kinds Of Feeling. The First Is To Feel In The Sense Of Concentrating Your Emotions On Something Immediately Available For Your Understanding: You Make Your Understanding Out Of The Emotions You Have About It. The Second Is To Feel In The Sense Of Being Affected Without Trying To Understand: Something Is Felt, You Do Not Know What, And It Is More Important To Feel It Than To Try To Understand It, Since Once You Try To Understand It You No Longer Feel It.

Shakespeare Alternated Between Musical Surrenders To Social Prestige And Magnificent Fits Of Poetic Remorse.